Wilma Bonet

Biography

Bonet, 50, is in an unusually good position to know. Born in New York, she came to the Bay Area in the early 1970s and has been working with a variety of companies ever since. "I came out of the teatro movement," starting with the East Bay street theater Los Topos and her own Teatro Claridad. She was a mainstay of the San Francisco Mime Troupe for six years, and has appeared frequently with such groups as the Old Globe, El Teatro Campesino, the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks and the California Shakespeare Festival throughout the '80s and '90s. Bonet lives in Oakland and has long been a full-time theater artist -- acting, writing, directing and teaching. In 1994, she joined with Tessa Koning-Martinez, Jaime Lujan and Dena Martinez to found the Latina Theatre Lab under the auspices of Brava! for Women in the Arts. "We came together because we found ourselves always in the same waiting rooms for auditions, all these very different types and ethnicities being considered for the same Latina parts."